GOP legislators: Following GWB scandal, reform all bi-state agencies

Feb. 21, 2014

Written by

@KenSerranoAPP

TRENTON — The Assembly Republicans Thursday unveiled a plan to reform bi-state and other independent agencies in New Jersey, calling for monitoring, strengthening of the state’s whistleblower law and requiring that the agencies comply with public access or “sunshine” laws.

Three of the five Assembly members at the news conference introducing the wide-ranging efforts sit on the joint legislative panel investigating the closing of the George Washington Bridge in September.

Republicans hold only four of the 12 seats on the New Jersey Legislative Select Committee on Investigation.

Amy Handlin, R-Monmouth, a member of the joint panel, took a swipe at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey to underscore why reforms were needed.

“The Port Authority is an out-of-control behemoth,” that operates in a “murky netherworld,” she said.

Among the suggestions was a measure to make it a fourth-degree crime to use “one’s official position to hurt commuters for unofficial purposes.”

She added: “Everyone who was implicated or potentially implicated in the bridgegate scandal was a public employee. Whatever they did for whatever irresponsible or crazy reason was done on the taxpayer dime. By what logic should it take a special legislative inquiry, let alone a U.S. attorney probe, for the public to learn what their own employees were up to?”

Assembly Minority Leader Jon Bramnick, R-Union, said, “There is no reason that we can’t have parallel policy and investigation at the same time. There is no reason to delay the changes that are so desperately needed in this state.”

Weinberg co-sponsored a transparency and accountability bill concerning the Port Authority a few years ago and received support from a New York legislator. Gov. Chris Christie conditionally vetoed the legislation.

“He gutted the bill,” she said.

No bill concerning the Port Authority would go through unless New York passed the bill itself, she said.

“Did they bother to reach out to any New York legislator?” she asked of the Republicans.

Bramnick, who does not sit on the joint select committee, said during the news conference that no one from New York has been contacted.

New Jersey also shares bi-state agencies with Delaware and Pennsylvania. The Republican measure would require the cooperation of legislators in those states, as well, to become law.

According to the Office of the State Comptroller, overall there are 587 independent agencies in the state.